BQC：A New Multi-GNSS Data Quality Checking

Toolkit
Huicui Liu1, Geshi Tang1, Davide Imparato2, Hongzheng Cui1, Baiyan Song1,Chirs
Rizos3,
1. Science and Technology on Aerospace Flight Dynamics Laboratory, Beijing Aerospace Control
Center, China, hcliu_bacc@163.com
2. Geoscience and Remote Sensing, TU Delft, Netherlands, D.imparato@tudelft.nl
3. School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales, Australia,
c.rizos@unsw.edu.au

Abstract: Multi-GNSS networks, for example M-GEX and iGMAS, are set up and grow quickly
with the development of new navigation systems and multi-GNSS receivers. It is unavoidable
that GNSS signals are deteriorated by several error sources. Thus GNSS network operators,
data users and receiver designers all require data quality checking (QC). However, few GNSS
data QC software can process data of new navigation systems even modernized GPS signals.
This paper introduces BQC, a multi-GNSS data QC toolkit which can process data of
GPS/GLONASS/Galileo/Beidou recorded in RINEX version 2 or 3. Various QC outputs are
written in QC report files as well as graphically displayed. Also in this paper, the cycle slip
detection processing of BQC is emphasized as a key algorithm and compared with that of
TEQC, the most widely-used GNSS data QC toolkit. The numerical results show that BQC
reduces miss probability in cycle slip detection and repairs cycle slip effects on multipath
sequences more reliable compared to TEQC.

BIOGRAPHIES

Huicui Liu, PhD, is an engineer of the Science and Technology on Aerospace Flight Dynamics
Laboratory, Beijing Aerospace Control Center. Her current research is in GNSS data quality checking
and GNSS application in deep space exploring.

Geshi Tang, PhD, is the leader of the Science and Technology on Aerospace Flight Dynamics
Laboratory. His current research is in orbit determination and GNSS data analysis.

Davide Imparato, is a PhD student at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands, at the
Department of Geoscience and Remote Sensing. He holds a M. Sc. Degree from the faculty of
aerospace engineering of the University of Pisa, Italy. His research focuses on Aircraft Navigation
Integrity, statistical hypothesis testing for RAIM algorithms and future GNSS integrity concepts.

Hongzheng Cui, PhD, is a post PhD of the Science and Technology on Aerospace Flight Dynamics
Laboratory, Beijing Aerospace Control Center. His current research is in GNSS data analysis.
Baiyan Song, is an engineer of the Science and Technology on Aerospace Flight Dynamics Laboratory,
Beijing Aerospace Control Center. His current research is in GNSS data analysis.

Chris Rizos is a professor of School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of New South
Wales, Australia. Chris has been researching the technology and high precision applications of GPS
since 1985, and has published over 600 journal and conference papers. Chris established the Satellite
Navigation and Positioning Group at UNSW in the early 1990s - Australia's premier academic R&D
group for GNSS and wireless positioning technology and applications, now a combined lab with the
School of Electrical Eng & Telecommunications. Chris is a member of a number of national and
international committees, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Navigation, a Fellow of the U.S.
Institute of Navigation, a Fellow of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG), an honorary
professor of Wuhan University (P.R. China), and is currently President of the IAG (2011-2015). He is a
member of the International GNSS Service (IGS) Governing Board and a member of its Executive. He
is also co-chair of the Steering Committee of Multi-GNSS Asia.

1 INTRODUCTION

Beidou Navigation Satellite System was declared a regional navigation service for the Asia-Pacific
region with 14 functioning satellites at the end of 2012. Additional Galileo satellites are to be launched
in the next year or so, so as to reach Final Operational Capability by 2018. Meanwhile GPS and
GLONASS are being modernised, with new signals being added in order to improve user navigation
and timing performance. As a result we have entered an era of “multi-GNSS” with capable receivers
and antennas now available. To prepare for the analysis of different GNSS measurements, to support
the development of new products and services the International GNSS Service (IGS) has established
the multi-GNSS Global Experiment (M-GEX) and associated ground receiver network
(ftp://igscb.jpl.gov/pub/resource/pubs/IGS_2010_Newcastle_Workshop_Recommendations.pdf) and
issued a Call For Participation worldwide in the summer of 2011 (Hugentobler & Neilan 2011). By
September 2013 the M-GEX network had more than 90 receiver stations
(ftp://cddis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/gps/data/campaign/mgex/, http://mgex.igs-ip.net/, http://igs.org/mgex)
supporting at least one of the new navigation systems, including Galileo, Beidou, and Japan's
Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS), besides GPS, GLONASS, and satellites broadcasting Satellite
Based Augmentation System (SBAS) signals (Langley 2013). The China Satellite Navigation Office
has proposed the establishment of a parallel global network of multi-GNSS stations as part of the
“international GNSS Monitoring and Assessment System” (iGMAS) comprising about 30 tracking
stations (9 in China and 21 in other countries).
All GNSS signals (and measurements) are degraded by several error sources, such as ionospheric
delay, tropospheric delay, multipath, and others. Furthermore the impact on derived products and
services varies among systems even in the case of the same multi-GNSS receiving antenna/receiver
since the satellite orbits, carrier frequencies and modulation types are different. Thus multi-GNSS
networks such as M-GEX and iGMAS would benefit from data quality checking (QC) tools.
The TEQC software, developed by UNAVCO is the most widely used GNSS data pre-processing
software for file format translation, file edition and QC (Estey & Meerterns 1999). However its QC
function is limited in the case of multi-GNSS applications for two reasons. The first is that TEQC QC
only handles RINEX file versions up to version 2.11 (see, e.g.,
http://igs.org/igscb/data/format/rinex2.11.txt), but multi-GNSS networks such as M-GEX and iGMAS
use RINEX version 3 (see, e.g., http://igs.org/igscb/data/format/rinex3.00.txt). The second one is that
TEQC QC can only scan GPS or GLONASS measurements. Most widely-used GNSS data processing
toolkits, such as GpsTools (Takasu & Kasai 2005) also have the above drawbacks. The German
Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (BKG) has developed the BKG Ntrip Client (BNC)
whose QC function is compatible with RINEX version 3. However BNC only outputs QC results for one
navigation system at a time. Moreover, QC results of GLONASS, Beidou and Galileo do not provide
information on the multipath effect – an important data quality index.
China’s Science and Technology on Aerospace Flight Dynamics Laboratory (AFDL) has developed
“BQC”, which can scan all GPS/GLONASS/Beidou/Galileo measurements recorded in RINEX version
2 or 3. This paper presents a brief introduction and describes the primary BQC algorithms. A set of
multi-GNSS observation data from M-GEX and iGMAS stations has been analysed to validate BQC’s
processing capability.

2 BQC AND ITS PRIMARY OUTPUTS

BQC provides the users an easy operating experience with a friendly GUI interfacing shown in Figure 1,
which are divided into two ribbons: the QC ribbon and the QC product view ribbon. With the QC
product view ribbon, the user can view the various QC results generated by previous QC analysis.
In the QC ribbon, there are two optional processing modes: in single-file QC mode, one RINEX
observation file is analyzed at a time to compute the following QC results using combinations of carrier
phase and pseudorange measurements, as well as ephemeris data in the RINEX navigation file:
 Figure 1. The interface of BQC

z satellite position including elevation (ELE) and azimuth

z signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
z ionospheric delay and it's rate of change (IOD)
z pseudorange multipath effects (MP)
Various statistical data, such as cycle slips, moving average of the MP sequence, mean SNRare
recorded system by system, satellite by satellite and item by item (shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3) in a
summary file similar to TEQC’s S-file, as well as observation information (shown in Figure 4).
Figure 2. The data header section (GPS system) of BQC summary file in single-file QC mode (for
observation files in RINEX 2)

Figure 3. The data header section (GPS system) of BQC summary file in single-file QC mode (for
observation files in RINEX 3)
 Figure 4. The header section of BQC summary file in single-file QC mode
One should note that multi-signal measurements of the four GNSSs are defined and recorded in
RINEX version 3 as listed in Table 1, which can all be compatible in BQC. In Addition, BQC scans all
the recorded observation types for pseudorange/carrier phase/Doppler/SNR and provides separate
QC results because different types of observation are attributed by different tracking mode or
channel and may behave different quality characteristics.
Table 1. The compatible frequencies of BQC
Frequency
f1 f2 f3 f4 f5
System
Beidou L1 L2 L5 \ \

GPS G1 G2 \ \ \

GLONASS B1 B2 B3 \ \

Galileo E1 E5a E6 E5b E5a+b

SBAS L1 \ L5 \ \

QZSS L1 L2 L5 LEX \

Choosing the multi-file QC mode can QC all the observation files stored in one folder and generates a
summary listing the key results of every observation file besides the QC products mentioned above so
that the user can have an overall browse.

3 CYCLE SLIP DETECTION ALGORITHMS

3.1 LINEAR CNBINATIONS FOR CYCLE SLIP DETECTION

The use of GNSS carrier phase measurements can deliver highly accurate positioning solutions as
long as the cycle slips are detected and repaired correctly. Cycle slip detection is a key processing of
any GNSS data QC software. Several dual-frequency linear combinations are used to do the cycle slip
detection and each is effective to different situations.
IOD and MP are the only two applied in TEQC. As derived in Estey & Meerterns (1999), the IOD of
epoch t k for f 2 can be estimated using:
α (L1,k - L2,k ) - (L1,k -1 - L2,k -1 )
I 2 ODk = ⋅
α -1 t k - t k -1

=
(I 2,k - I 2,k -1 ) + α ⋅ λ1ΔN1,k - λ2 ΔN 2,k (1)

(t k - t k -1 ) α - 1 t k - t k -1
2
⎛ f ⎞
where α = ⎜⎜ 1 ⎟⎟ , and I i ,k and ΔN i ,k represent the ionospheric delay and cycle slips at epoch t k
⎝ f2 ⎠
for frequency f i ( i = 1,2 ) respectively. According to equation ( 1 ), cycle slips only show up in the IOD

sequence if λ1 ΔN 1,k ≠ λ 2 ΔN 2, k . Then IOD is not effective for certain receivers which do not have truly

independent GPS L1 and L2 tracking. MP can be estimated using the following linear measurement
combinations (Rizos, 1996):
⎛ 2 ⎞ 2
MP1 = C1 - ⎜1 + ⎟ L1 + L2
⎝ α -1 ⎠ α -1 (2)
= M 1 + g 1 (N 1 λ1 ,N 2 λ 2 ) + g 1 (m1 ,m 2 )
2α ⎛ 2α ⎞
MP 2 = C 2 - L1 + ⎜ - 1⎟ L2
α -1 ⎝ α -1 ⎠ (3)
= M 2 + g 2 (N 1λ1 , N 2 λ 2 ) + g 2 (m1 , m 2 )
⎛ 2 ⎞ 2α ⎛ 2α ⎞
where g 1 (x, y ) = -⎜1 + y , g 2 ( x, y ) = -
2
⎟x + x+⎜ - 1⎟ y , and mi and M i are the phase
⎝ α -1 ⎠ α -1 α -1 ⎝ α -1 ⎠
multipath error and pseudorange multipath error for frequency f i respectively. The multipath error in
carrier phase is relatively small, with a maximum of 1/4 cycles (Kaplan and Hegarty, 2006), and can
largely be ignored. Hence the MP sequence obtained using the above equation is predominately
affected by integer ambiguities. The MP sequence shows step offsets when a cycle slip has occurred,
and can be used for cycle slip detection either by a 1st-order forward difference or by a moving RMS

comparison. This detection approach is effective for most cases of λ1 ΔN 1,k = λ 2 ΔN 2,k as mentioned

before. And the detection efficiency is secured by the using of MP1 and MP2 both combined using L1
and L 2 but with different weights. However the MP sequence is not stable especially when the
satellite elevation is low, consequently they are less sensitive to small cycle slips.
The widely used Melbourne-Wübbena linear combination (Melbourne, 1985, and Wübbena, 1985) is
added in BQC to enhance detection efficiency, which is written as:

L MW =
1
( f1 L1 − f 2 L2 ) − 1 ( f1 P1 + f 2 P2 )
f1 − f 2 f1 + f 2
(4)
=
c
(N 1 − N 2 )
f1 − f 2
where c is the light speed. This combination removes the effects from the atmosphere (both
ionosphere and troposphere), the geometry, and the satellite and receiver clocks L MW and MP are
combination of both pseudorange measurements and carrier phase measurements, while IOD
combines only the latter one. It is clear according to equation ( 4 ) that L MW will not signify the
occurrence of cycle slips when the cycle slips on L1 and L 2 are the same. Slips is suspected if
L MW > 6σ LMW , where σ LMW is the standard deviation of previous M (M is set to be 50 by default)
points of the L MW sequence.
Besides an additional linear combination in cycle slip detection, BQC does several improvement
compared to TEQC, which are presented in the following two sections.

3.2 IOD SEQUENCES AND CYCLE SLIP DETECTION

The slip-free IOD is expected to be small if the ionosphere is stable and the observation interval is
short enough. TEQC employs this method and assumes by default that cycle slips are detected if the
IOD>400cm/min considering signal path changes in the ionosphere, time variation of the ionospheric
delay, motion of the satellite and possible motion of the antenna itself. This threshold is a widely used
empirical value for GPS and can be modified by users according to the tracking scenario.
However, this cycle slip detection algorithm has drawbacks. False identification occurs when
α λ1ΔN1,k - λ2 ΔN 2,k
⋅ ≤ 400cm/min according to equation ( 1 ). As an example, the observation data
α -1 t k - t k -1
collected at the IGS ‘aira’ station on the 180th day of 2013 were processed. The I2OD sequences of
seven GPS satellites calculated by TEQC are shown in Figure 5 (a). Every detected slip-deteriorated
I2OD value has been replaced by the one of the previous slip-free epoch, hence the jumping points in
Figure 5 (a) correspond to cycle slip epochs missed because the I2OD value was less than the
standard threshold value. Thirdly, in multi-GNSS applications the characteristics of IOD varies with
different satellite orbits, signal frequencies, observation stations and so on, thus it is not always
possible for users to define the threshold values with any certainty.
Instead of setting an arbitrary threshold, one cycle slip is declared by BQC when the IOD value of one
epoch is larger than 6 σ , where σ is the standard deviation of previous M (M is set to be 50 by
default) points of the IOD sequence. Then the detected IOD value is corrected in the same way as by
TEQC. The I2OD sequence of the same set of ‘aira’ data output by BQC is shown in Figure 5 (b). Note
fewer false identifications of cycle slips compared with Figure 5(a).

(a)
4

-2 G02
G03
-4 G04
I2OD(m/min)

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000

G07
G08
(b)
1 G10
G12
0.5

-0.5

-1
0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000
sample(Δ t=30s)

Figure 5. The I2OD sequences calculated by TEQC and BQC for IGS station ‘aira’
3.3 THE REPAIR CYCLE SLIP EFFECTS ON MP SEQUENCES

MP, correlated with pseudorange code rate, antenna pattern, satellite-antenna-reflector location, etc,
cause positioning bias of up to several metres (Braasch, 1994), and should therefore be monitored
carefully. Thus cycle slips in MP should be repaired as well as detected.
The MP sequence is assumed to be random, similar to zero-mean noise. Thus BQC does the repair in
the following way: the unknown ambiguity can be assumed to be a constant and be subtracted directly
if there is no cycle slip during the observation period. If cycle slips do occur, the MP sequence should
be repaired section-by-section, as defined by cycle slip epochs. Although how TEQC does the repair is
not clear yet, its corresponding QC results can be shown compared with BQC. Figure 6 shows the
MP1 sequence of GPS satellite G09 on the 180th day of 2013 from IGS ‘aira’ station. Note the cycle
slip at the 1024th epoch, and the difference between the two repaired sequences, although they
coincide with each other after the 1072th epoch. The MP1 sequence near the cycle slip epoch has
been changed after processed by TEQC, which leads to larger MP standard derivation. However BQC
preserves the original characteristics of the MP sequence and the corresponding statistics is more
reliable.

after repaired by TEQC

5
before repaired
after repaired by BQC
0
MP1(m)

-5

1000 1010 1020 1030 1040 1050 1060 1070 1080 1090 1100
sample(Δ t=30s)

Figure 6. The repairing to MP sequence with cycle slips

4 CONCLUSION

BQC, as introduced in this paper, is a useful multi-GNSS data QC toolkit designed with a friendly and
easy operating GUI interfacing. BQC is compatible with all the frequencies and observation types of
GPS / GLONASS / Beidou / Galileo / SBAS / QZSS defined in RINEX 2 and 3. Compared with TEQC,
BQC detects cycle slips in carrier phase measurements with relatively diverse methods, and provides
fewer false identifications and more reliable repair of cycle slip effects on MP. BQC is already used
routinely as a QC tool for iGMAS and MGEX data in BACC. The users can access the relative QC
results as well as the toolkit for free after the website of AFDL is established in the near future.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors wish to thank Dr. Lou Estey of UNAVCO for his help in understanding TEQC. This work is
funded by China’s iGMAS and the data used in this paper are provided by M-GEX and iGMAS tracking
stations.
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